


Protest Song

by lanthano (epilanthanomai)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-09
Updated: 2017-06-09
Packaged: 2018-10-30 04:44:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,212
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10869378
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/epilanthanomai/pseuds/lanthano
Summary: for the Johnny Cash ficathon, "The One on the Right Is on the Left":Now, the one on the left works in a bankAnd the one in the middle drives a truckThe one on the right's an all-night deejayAnd the guy in the rear got drafted





	Protest Song

Some mornings John wakes with phantom shrapnel in his right shoulder. He rubs at the scars and stretches until the pain fades and the rest of his aches can catch up, and he says a prayer for each strained muscle and burn and bruise. His body may be getting old but living never will. He prays for Mary last, and longest.  
  
They didn't hate the fifth lieutenant. The second lieutenant had his weapon jam and took a bullet to the leg dragging Fitz back under cover. He got off easy, shipped stateside with a chest full of medals. The seventh lieutenant started quoting General Sherman and it was only days before that Yankee son of a bitch got fragged. The third, fourth, sixth, and eighth hadn't remembered to pack the brains the Marine Corps had so ever-lovingly pounded into their skulls and had died too quick to deserve their stripes. Peterson was the only one who was worth a damn. He was a crazy bastard, but he kept them alive those first long months and he saved every last one of them time and again. He'd been a wise kind of crazy, and it's his voice in John's head that has him rechecking his ammo on hunts and tuning out his boss and running his own eyes over the engine before letting a car out of his sight. Every now and then he prays for Peterson, too, even if he never would have wanted it.  
  
  
It all starts when Sam gets sent home from school on Columbus Day for saying it should be called Let's Celebrate the Rape and Genocide of Indigenous Peoples Day instead. Trail of Tears Day, he said. Inoculate Blankets with Smallpox Day. John wakes up to the phone ringing in an empty house, and he's so relieved that it's nothing serious he doesn't mind coming in to school to pick Sam up. Sam could use the practice with the new .357 anyway. He orders him to start with some wind sprints so he remembers it's punishment, then goes back inside to sleep. At fifteen, Dean wasn't in school often enough to get sent home. At fourteen, Sam hadn't been either. This can only be an improvement.  
  
Sam doesn't remember Desert Storm. Dean had watched the news every night he could, but it didn't mean anything to Sam. He'd been relieved, mostly, that Sam was too young. It was hard enough making sure Dean wasn't sneaking out of the house with a fake ID to enlist. He'd been twelve and gangly, winter pale, with skinned knees and shaggy hair with a rattail John itched to cut off. He'd traded in scuffed sneakers for boots and was just starting to pick up some height but he still had the sweetness of a boy. Dean was made for other things. Those were not his battles. John told the twinge of guilt to quiet down. Not his boys. Not yet.  
  
Sam's Latin teacher says he has a remarkable aptitude for language—that he soaks up the fundamental structures and reads far ahead of his class. John knows Sam has a remarkable aptitude for lots of things, but he's pretty damn shocked to hear it from a schoolteacher. Sam's math teacher can barely pull himself out of an alcoholic stupor to shake John's hand, but his history teacher gives John this look, this it's-too-bad-they're-kids-and-we-can't-kill-them-to-shut-them-up look, and says that Sam's a challenging presence in the class. John thinks maybe it's time to listen to Sam's whining about staying in one place for high school. He thinks maybe it's time.  
  
Sam's the one giving him funny looks the next week, but he's tired, coming off a night hunt, dozing into the eggs Dean cooked and wondering if if there's enough hot water for a bath. He's tired, and he doesn't notice until after he's eaten that it's fall break and Sam couldn't have been going to school when he left the house. There aren't a lot of creatures that can outmaneuver him now, but he never sees it coming with his kids.  
  
Dean has all the guns laid out on a drop cloth, and he keeps his gaze fixed on the .22 in his hands. "Dean," John says.  
  
"Sir."  
  
He doesn't ask Dean where he can find Sam—they're brothers, and some lines you don't cross. "I'm going out. Call me if Sammy comes home."  
  
"Yes sir." He sounds relieved, and he has that particular twist to his mouth that means Sam's going to hear exactly how he felt about being put in this situation.  
  
"Check the action on the .38, would you? The trigger's pulling more than I'm happy with."  
  
"Yes sir."  
  
John locks the door behind him and heads for his truck. He'll start at the center of town and move out from there.  
  
Sam and his friends are on Main Street, marching up and down in front of the school making noise about globalization and the IMF and the WTO and the second John sees them he feels tired. He feels all the hours he's been up and he feels all the years he's been fighting. He feels old and worn out and he wants to tell Sam that none of it matters, that it makes no difference who's in office when the only thing standing between life and darkness is a man and whatever weapons he can bring to the battle. John has brought everything he has and more besides. John has trained his sons— _his boys_ —and if Sam needs to make a damned fool of himself protesting international trade laws, well. It's a respite from the battle. John will give him this, and if he's lucky, it will be enough.  
  
He drives home and finds Dean right where he left him. Dean hands him a sawed-off shotgun and a brush, and they sit, side by side, cleaning and polishing their arsenal until they hear Sam sneaking in through the upstairs windows. In broad daylight, the idiot.  
  
"Dean," John says. "Go tell your idiot brother he needs to put an hour in at the range before he goes out tonight." Dean grins and wipes his hands on an oily rag. He's already halfway up the stairs when John adds, "And Dean? You're going with him." Dean doesn't say anything, but John can hear his boots stomping up the hall. John slumps back on the couch, letting his eyes fall shut. Maybe there's enough hot water for a bath.  
  
  
When Sam was born, tiny and perfect, red and squalling, John held him and put his memories of jungle rot away. He put the smell of gun oil away. He put away Watts and Romero and McClatchy and JD. He put away his guns and his uniforms and his photographs and if sometimes, on a weekend back at base with his back aching and the rest of the boys teasing him about going soft, if he brought the memories out then, there was no one there who couldn't hear them and give back worse.  
  
Tony never came home. He lives in a basement apartment outside Cincinnati, but he never left the ambush that killed Peterson and Dutch. John holds his sons and knows himself for the luckiest bastard still walking this earth.  
  
---  
 


End file.
